Graeme McMillan wrote:Literally years in the making, it’s finally been confirmed that The Multiversity — a nine-part series created by writer Grant Morrison exploring parallel worlds and incarnations of the DC Universe superheroes — will finally launch this August.

Morrison describes the series as “more than just a multi-part comic book series, it’s a cosmos-spanning, soul-shaking experience that puts YOU on the front line in the Battle For All Creation against the demonic destroyers known as the Gentry!” Each issue of the series will be illustrated by a different artist, with Cameron Stewart, Justice League’s Ivan Reis and longtime Morrison collaborator Frank Quitely involved in the project.

The Multiversity has been in development for at least eight years, with a number of projected (and then rescheduled) launch dates going all the way back to 2010. Comic Book Resources confirmed the August 2014 launch date Monday, accompanied by art showing the Superman of Earth-23, modeled after Barack Obama, who made his debut appearance in Morrison’s Action Comics #9 in 2012.

The series marks the first new Morrison work from DC Entertainment since he stepped down from regular monthly duties on Batman, Incorporated in July last year. The writer is also working on a Wonder Woman graphic novel for the publisher.

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Borys Kit wrote:Grant Morrison is ready to unleash his Lord of the Rings.

Or Use Your Illusion or Citizen Kane, depending on the analogy the iconic comics author is using.

Morrison — in the midst of curating this weekend's MorrisonCon, perhaps the first comics-plus convention to revolve around one personality — and DC Entertainment are finally unveiling the long-rumored and long-in-the-works Multiversity comic book story.

he story is an eight-issue series comprised of six one-shots and a two-part story, featuring different titles but working under the rubrick of Multiversity. Each issue features a 38-page lead story and an eight-page back-up. They are set for release in late 2013.

Additionally, each issue will be drawn by a different artist, and while DC is keeping most names under wraps, it is confirming Frank Quitely as the artist for the fourth book, Pax Americana. Morrison worked with Quitely on landmark runs of All-Star Superman, Uncanny X-Men and We3, among others and Heat Vision presents an exclusive first-look from the book here.

Multiversity presents alternate realities and parallel worlds, something that DC was on the forefront comics-wise when, in 1961, it had the original Flash from the 1940s meet his more modern counterpart.

The success of that story, which appeared in Flash #123, allowed DC to re-introduce its heroes from comics’ golden age and have them fight side-by-side with the characters that had been relaunched after superheroes’ near demise in the 1950s.

An Earth where the Justice League are bad guys and Lex Luthor is the only hero? Check. A planet where World War II never ended? Yup.

“There’s something always appealing about a Russian Superman and a vampire Batman," Morrison tells Heat Vision. “It’s a different way of looking at the archetypes that we’re familiar with. And I wanted to a really massive story that would be my Lord of the Rings and it would be the best thing I’ve ever done. Whether it is, I don’t know. But I’ve certainly spent a long time on it."

Morrison has been working on the comic for the past six years and he says he has never approached writing a comic the way he is writing Multiversity. Nor has he ever spent so much time on a project.

“Most comics are done in a improvisational way," he explains. “Deadlines make it so you don’t have a lot of time to really work it and do a lot of revisions, so most of what you see is first draft. But for this one, I wanted to do a proper book about superheroes. So I’ve been writing this more like a screenplay, where you write drafts and then redraft and redraft again. And basically polish things down to as much as a sheen as I can possibly manage."

Each issue will feature comics about the adventures of the previous story’s heroes, an idea introduced in that historic issue of Flash.

“If you’re having a war across multiple parallel realities, one way they can contact each other is to publish comic books that others can read and know what’s going on," says Morrison. "So in each parallel reality you’ll see one of them is reading the comic that you just read the month before and finding out what happend to the good guys, giving them a chance to defeat the bad guys in the next one. They are kind of passing on, in a chain, their own adventures."

Pax Americana, being unveiled at MorrisonCon, features heroes such as the Blue Beetle, The Question and Captain Atom, part of the group of characters known as the Charlton heroes, named after the company bought by DC in 1983. The heroes were supposed to be used by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in the mid-1980s, but after the company saw Moore’s controversial plans, it balked and made him create new heroes, which led to the groundbreaking Watchmen.

The Pax story revolves around the assassination of a president and how the Charleston characters failed him. “We’re taking the characters and applying it back to Watchmen and seeing what we could get. Nobody has really used those Alan Moore tricks in 25 years so it seemed right to take that very tight, controlled, self-reflecting storytelling and seeing if we can do something new with it."

He adds, “It’s not trying to be Watchmen, it’s more of an echo of a storytelling technique of Watchmen. >Despite some reports, Multiversity is not Morrison’s swan song to superheroes. He is leaving the monthly comic grind after his Batman Incorporated run ends with issue 12 and Action Comics with issue 17 (not the previously reported 16), and says he will focus on “finite projects."

“All I ever said is I’m not doing the monthly comics once I finish up Batman and Superman. I’ll never leave superhero stuff because I really enjoy doing it."

Andy Hunsaker wrote: The other big project is Multiversity, and he went into much more detail about what this is going to be – namely, a nine-part series that takes place throughout seven different alternative DC universes, with a through-line based on something taken from the old "Flash of Two Worlds" story, wherein the comic books of each world tell the stories of the other worlds, and they warn each new world of "a gigantic cosmic threat which is the most terrifying thing I think anyone's ever created in a comic," he said, before adding with a laugh. "I don't do hyperbole."

The interesting part is the breakdown of each 40-page issue, every one with a different artist (although not all of them have been chosen or revealed so far), and as of yesterday, he said he was about halfway through the half of them he hadn't finished yet. "This is my magnum opus," he said. "This is why I love comics."

"Honestly, I'm trying to make each one of them the best superhero comic you've ever read, but in different ways," he told me. "Each one of the episodes also sets up a potential series. You could do a Multiverse range of books out of this. All of them are designed to be issue one of potential long-running series as well as being self-contained. It's been a storytelling challenge, but the whole idea is to set stuff up for future development – not necessarily by me, but by DC in some way."

So here's the boil-down.Mutlversity #1: We revisit the world he established in Action Comics #9, wherein Calvin Ellis is president of the United States and also Superman, and he's not afraid to use super-powers in shaping and enforcing policy. In this issue, we'll see how the Justice League of the Multiverse comes together. After I mentioned to him that I sort of wanted to read Ellis in his own series after that issue, Morrison told me "I bet he gets his own series – once you see him in Multiversity, he's so great in that, he deserves his own series."

Multiversity #2: A pulp world where the population of Earth in 2013, just after a major world war, is only about two billion. This will include a trechcoat-wearing, gold-helmed occult adventurer in Doc Fate, along with The Immortal Man and The Mighty Atom and Lady Blackhawk, among others.Multiversity #3: The Just, set on Earth 11. This is a look at the children of superheroes – a son of Superman, a son of Batman, etc. – who exist in a world where they have incredible abilities, but the previous generation had ushered in a utopia, so they don't really have any notion of where to direct it, and they're very unhappy with the world as is. It's based on old stories of "the supersons" who grew up to be "real mean bastards." There's Megamorpho, the Sapphire Stag's daughter. This will also include a lot of the forgotten 1990s characters relegated to doing re-enactments of famous superhero battles. This includes Kyle Rayner, Walker Gabriel and may even include Bloodwynd, Blood Pack, and "the stuff Christopher Priest created for Justice League."

Multiversity #4: Pax Americana. This is an idea which seems long overdue – taking the Watchmen storytelling devices and retroactively applying them to the Charlton Comics characters they were originally based upon. Frank Quitely will be handling the art on this one, which will be laid out in a rigid 8-panel grid system similar to how Watchmen comics were. "We created this grid, which is 8 panels, which breaks down into 16, and it's just been one of the most amazing experiences to write this comic. It's like calculus," Morrison said. "Everything's grids, and we can keep subdividing the grids for storytelling effects and the type of things no one's done before – the super digital approach to the page." Morrison said this is "the next stage" of Quitely, and "honestly, it kicks the ass of whatever he's doing with Mark Millar right now." He also claimed he felt like this chapter will be his Citizen Kane, saying both Quitely and himself feel like it's the best thing they've ever done in superhero comics – in just 40 pages.

"It's a whole new story," Morrison told me. "It starts off with the president being executed in reverse. That's where it begins. There's a peace sign on fire – you know, Watchmen had the smiley face with blood? We're taking that and doing the Rutles doing the Beatles. We're taking the peace sign, which is equivalent to the smiley face, and settling it on fire, which is equivalent to the blood. There's a quote from Delmore Schwartz that says 'time is a fire in which we burn, time is a school in which we learn.' The issue's called 'In Which We Burn.' It works backwards through a man's life, but it starts with the death of the president. It all goes in reverse. The president's been shot from space. Then you cut to the Charlton character Peacemaker tied up, and a bunch of men looking at him, saying 'we don't understand, we've run the tapes backwards and forwards, why did you do it, Chris? Why'd you kill the president?" That's our first four pages. It tells you the whole story of this superhuman initiative. It's kind of taking what Watchmen was and putting it in the current political climate, and that changes everything. It's replacing those characters with the originals, so you've got Captain Atom himself now instead of Dr. Manhattan, and that changes everything. It's about this one man who discovered who he really is, and there's a "Rosebud" moment at the very end in the last panel. That's all I want to say about it."

Multiversity #5: Thunderworld. This will be Morrison's attempt to deliver a pure, all-ages story of Captain Marvel (aka Shazam, although he told me he's still using the name Captain Marvel) without irony, to see if he can make the purity of Billy Batson resonate with a modern audience without having to make him "edgy." Here's some Cameron Stewart art from "Thunderworld."

"Right now, he's called Captain Marvel," Morrison says of the Shazam nomenclature. "I'm still thinking. I want to talk to DC about maybe going back to the Captain Thunder name, but who knows? I don't know yet. We'll see what's best for it. Right now, he's Captain Marvel. But that one is my attempt to see if you can get the pure note of Captain Marvel, with no irony and no camp and just make it work for everyone. It's like a myth, a little folk tale. It's pure. There are no apologies for Mary Bromfield writing in her 'good deeds' ledger. The model was Pixar. I tried to think 'what would Pixar do with this concept?' We tried to create a really nice, complete adventure that says everything about Captain Marvel that's pure and great and non-ironic." Multiversity #6: Master Men. basically, it will be Nazi superheroes, in a reality formerly known as Earth X (aka Earth 10, he said, which hearkens back to Weapon X becoming Weapon Ten) where the Nazis won World War II and took over the world. What if baby Kal-El's ship landed in the Sudetenland? Morrison says this is his epic Shakespearean Game of Thrones kind of heavy parallel world story, and it apparently opens with Hitler on the toilet reading Action Comics.

"Imagine you're Superman," Morrison explained, "and for the first 25 years of your life, you were working for Hitler, and then you realize 'oh my god, it's Hitler! Shit! Now I get it! Now I see who the baddie is!' And he cleans up, and they create a utopia, but the utopia is based on the Nazi principles that he was indoctrinated with, so the architecture's all this soaring, cheesy, sentimental, overwrought, overwritten, grotesque stuff. Everything's overblown, everything's wrong, everything's ripe and ready for destruction in this culture, and Superman knows it, so you've got this conflicted character. Not only a Nazi Superman, but a Nazi Superman who knows that his entire society, although it looks utopian, is built on the bones of the dead and is ultimately wrong and must be destroyed.

"Into this come the Freedom Fighter characters, led by Uncle Sam, who is the last remnant of an America that was conquered in 1956, and he's now gathered all the people that Hitler killed – give me your huddled masses, basically. The Freedom Fighters characters, we recast them all as Hitler's enemies. Doll Man's a Jehovah's Witness, The Ray is Dumbledore, Black Condor's a black man, Phantom Lady's a gypsy – basically, all the people who Hitler persecuted and they suddenly come back. This is the return of the repressed."

Multiversity #7: Ultra Comics. This is set in the real world – our actual world, the one you're reading this article in. He claims they are using an amazing new technology to craft this issue that he can't talk about or reveal, but he insisted that "this book is haunted!"

"The Earth Prime one, the Ultra Comics," Morrison told me, "it's like a technology, it's like we've discovered something you can do with comics that hasn't been done. In terms of novelty, that's really got me excited, you know? I don't want to talk about what it is, because other people will latch onto it and probably use it before I get a chance. It's so obvious, I can't believe no one's done this thing. It's a haunted comic book! You will have an experience you've not had before. It's a haunted comic book. It doesn't involve anything that you've never seen in a comic book before. We use the old style technology of panels on a page and ink."

"What would a superhero be like in this world?" he posited. "It's not Kick-Ass and it's not Batman. It's something you have never seen before, and it's for real and an actual superhero. We're going to make a superhero in front of you."

Then there will be a "guidebook" sort of issue that explains how the Multiverse works, and the final issue will head back to the same world of the first issue, tie it all together and wrap it all up.

Honestly, that all sounds pretty fascinating, and I think 'alternate realities' are the best places for Morrison to play around in, so he can be unfettered by troublesome continuity things. What say you?

Grant Morrison has been traveling the DC Comics multiverse for a long while, and soon, readers will finally be able to join him with the release of "The Multivesity" – the world-hopping event years in the making.

At Comic-Con International in San Diego, the publisher held a panel on the event featuring the Scottish writer, artist Cameron Stewart and Editor Eddie Berganza to give fans their first look inside what the final series will be -- including a wave of new art and design work posted below!

"I'm not even me. I'm the evil version of Grant from Earth 3," joked Morrison at the start. He then described the long time the series has been underway. "I've witnessed dynasties rise and fall, continents shift...I actually started this thing right after '52' ended."

The panel then started talking about the history of DC Comics that led to this series including Carmine Infantino's classic "Flash of Two Worlds" story. Morrison related how the reason this story existed was because the Barry Allen character took on the Flash identity because he read a comic of the Jay Garrick Flash. If comics and metafiction were a part of the story from the beginning, it made sense to the writer that there would be more such connections all through the multiverse. The pulp generation of issue #2 will be read by the teen cast of a later issue who are board with their own world, and other small comics connections will bleed into the story through the event.

Musing on the idea that vibrations are what carry characters from one world to another, Morrison came upon the idea that music and sound waves were a strong theme for any multiverse story. "A lot of people didn't understand why at the end of 'Final Crisis' Superman sang Darkseid to death," he joked. "But that's kind of what the whole series is about: singing comic books."

The writer's own personal origin story for the multiverse was discussed as "Final Crisis" revealed that the Monitor of the original universe would mutate as he divided into more and more Monitors -- much like ink blots on page spreading and getting more chaotic in shape. "It's a gigantic consciousness bigger than anything watching the DC Universe -- it loves to study it, but it's also kind of afraid," he described of the force outside the worlds of the multiverse.

Nix Woton -- the last on the Monitors from "Final Crisis" -- will be the through line of the entire series as Morrison joked "He travels the multiverse in a yellow submarine." When a threat challenges all the worlds, he goes on a quest to stop it. That story kicks off in "The Multiversity" #1 before splitting the story into non-chronological one-shot chapters focusing on each world and then tying up all the threads in issue #2.

Morrison praise the work of Ivan Reis on issue #1 as an artist who (combined with inker Joe Prado) is able to match the style of some of Morrison's favorite DC artists like Neal Adams, though the style will move through all the one-shot issues as Stewart and others take on each world.

The writer also gets to play with his frequent theme of comics that break the fourth wall in the event. "When I was writing the book 'Supergods' and doing my research into the early MArvel stuff, I became fascinated that Stan Lee used to talk directly to the readers," he recalled before launching into a pretty solid Stan Lee impersonation to explain how communicating through to the reader used to be done. "The Multiersity" will take a similar track with much more mental results.

The pulp world of Earth 20 featuring "Doc Fate" takes place on a world that may be in the future but is just getting over its own world war, as drawn by Chris Sprouse. Characters like Lady Blackhawk and the Immortal Man were redesigned by Morrison himself to fight zombie paratroopers in this one-shot. The story will also include a new version of the original Green Lantern Abin Sur. "My idea is that Abin Sur is the Green Lantern [of earth's sector]...but the reason we never see him is because he looks like Satan," he said. "His costume is based on the original Mart Nodell Green Lantern comic from the 1940s but slightly updated."

"The Multiversity: The Just" takes place on Earth 16 featuring the descendants of Batman, Superman and others as inspired by the classic Bob Haney superhero stories. Here, the teens no longer have any villains to fight, and Morrison calls them "flat, kind of feckless characters" in the vein of reality shows like "The Hills" (which he joked, "Does anyone remember that?") while Connor Hawke will be the Bill Ray Cyrus of the world trying to stop his daughter from becoming involved in the superhero world to be corrupted. "This is quite a fun book, and the more I see of Ben Oliver's art, the more fun it gets," the writer explained. Morrison himself designed the Atom for this world based on the teenage Ray Palmer from Dan Jurgens' "Teen Titans" run in the late '90s.

In this world, Lex Luthor's daughter Alexis is dating Damian Wayne -- however this doesn't sit well with Superman's son since Lex killed Superman in this world. A twist on "the World's Finest romance" as Morrison described it. The book will also include other legacy characters from the '90s like Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, Wally West and Offspring from "The Kingdom."

The issue focusing on the Charlton Comics-based world will remix the original Steve Ditko characters with the style of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' "Watchmen." Morrison called the story a "political, cosmic, philosophical piece." "It's not the same story as 'Watchmen.' Nothing that happens in that story happens here, but we use some of those techniques," he explained. So instead of the Comedian dying at the beginning of Watchmen, here we start with the Peacemaker assassinating the president to get the ball rolling.

Stewart said that he visited Frank Quitely's studios years ago to look at pages of the work, and he called it the best work of the artists career. Morrison said that in the style of "Watchmen," he wrote five pages of script for every one page of comics -- something which drove Quitely up a wall as he laid out his eight-panel grids. "I've forced him to do terrible things," laughed Morrison.

The "Thunderworld" issue with art by Stewart will focus on Shazam and the Fawcett characters, and as that art appeared on the screen, Morrison cried, "It's the best Shazam ever!!!" Stewart recalled that Morrison announced his involvement on the one-shot before he even knew he was doing it, but he was willing to go wherever Morrison wanted.

"I didn't want to do a flat out emulation of CC Beck...but I wanted it to have the same quality," he said of his take on the characters. Morrison said the effect is that the Captain Marvel of this series really looks like Captain Marvel rather than just another version of Superman. Set on Earth 5, the book will be more of the all-ages book of "The Multiverity" as Morrison said he wanted to make each book completely unique so as to appeal to as many readers as possible. "Thunderworld" is Morrison's Pixar story or -- as Stewart called it -- the "All-Star Superman" of Shazam's world.

Dr. Sivanna will be a major villain for the whole project as he tracks Shazam's lightning back to its source and finds a way to build "a technological Rock of Eternity" by scientifically reverse-engineering that magic. Stewart said that he and colorist Nathan Fairbairn were the first artists done with their part of the event, and now he's enjoying seeing art from other creators coming in. "Frank Quitely's taken two and a half years with a little detour into Millarwolrd, but [Cameron] was finished in five minutes!" Morrison laughed.

The series will also have an accompanying guidebook that will feature Jack Kirby's Kamandi as well as a full accounting of the 52 worlds of the multiverse, of which Morrison said, "After all this time, we felt we owed you that much." That will include the full version of the multiverse map which is full of in reference like the fact that the world dedicated to "Just Imagine Stan Lee Created..." universe being on the exact opposite parallel from the Jack Kirby inspired world. Morrison said that fans should demand a blacklight version of the poster from designer Rian Hughes. Posters of the map were given out to all attendees of the panel.

Importantly, the map will open up the multiverse to other creators moving forward and leaves seven unknown worlds to be discovered later as DC wants. Overall, Morrison said that he felt past attempts to make worlds in the multiverse were always "just an excuse to make an evil Batman" but these worlds are fully developed ideas that can live on in comics for a long time to come.

Fan questions started with a reader wondering what attracted Morrison to the project. "I've always been fascinated by alternate versions of the superhero characters," he said, recalling his childhood love of Professor Zoom as well as the early Earth 2 stories. "There's something incoherent and not intellectual about it, but I find that all exciting."

One small story in the series will be inspired by a 1970s story by Martin Pasko about what would happen if Bruce Wayne was not inspired by a bat flying in his window but by anything from a knight to a shooting star. All the versions of the character from that story will work their way into the event on the edges.

Some of Morrison's past characters like Animal Man or the team of Superman from "Final Crisis" won't appear, but by the end of the event, there will be a team of characters drawn from across the multiverse which Morrison promised "will only include on straight white guy."

The idea that Earth 16 was marked off as "Young Justice's" world while Morrison picked the name for his own legacy character world came up, and the writer said that when he learned of the conflict, he personally devised ideas for how the "Young Justice" cast could have existed in this world/how his characters could occasionally use holograms in order to look like cartoons. It won't be a major focus of the story in any sense, but everything can fit together for fans who care about that.

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Lucas Siegel wrote:Multiversity, the long-awaited story reestablishing the multiverse by Grant Morrison and a host of artists is finally coming, and DC Comics hosted a panel at Comic-Con International: San Diego to reveal new details.

Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart, and editor Eddie Berganza took the dais for the panel hosted by John Cunningham.

"I'm not even me, I'm the evil version of Grant from Earth-3," Morrison started off.

"I've seen dynasties rise and fall since I started working on this." Morrison started on this as far back as 2006, and it was first approved in 2009.

Cunningham took the panel back to The Flash of Two Worlds, the first DC Multiverse story in the 60s. "This was the first one, and I loved it because The Flash Barry Allen takes on the role of The Flash because of reading a comic book when he was young. And funny enough the guy in the comic was a real man from another world called Jay Garrick.

"So I thought if it ever happened one day that something so devastating was to hit the entire multiverse, one of the ways we could communicated about it is by writing comics about it. So you'll see each issue, they'll be reading comic books about the other worlds' adventures. And our own real world also exists - it's Earth-33, which used to be known as Earth-Prime. I also liked that the multiverse was based on vibration - vibration is music! A lot of people didn't understand how Superman basically sang Darkseid to death at the end of Final Crisis. The whole DC Universe is a piece of music, so it's all put into an Octave and a structure of eights."

Likewise in Kamandi, he was reading comic books to learn about the past of the DC Universe.

The Monitors used to look at the 52 universes, but they're all gone now, "and we've become more vulnerable to things from beyond."

The cover to Multiversity #1 was shown next, with the President Superman and other crazy alternate characters on the cover.

Morrison said that it's been really fun working on this over the years, and now integrating it into the New 52 to keep it current. Berganza noted, "As an editor, I have to say - he's on time! He's almost done with this, in fact!"

The last of the Monitors is "set in place to protect the Multiverse," so he's "kind of my author's character," Morrison said. Thunderer is a character who is one of the DC "Marvel characters," an analogue for Thor who's an aboriginal God.

Morrison is excited to talk directly to the reader, the way that Stan Lee used to do. "It plays into stuff I'm interested in, breaking down the barriers of what's real and what's not. We developed this hypnotic induction technique to really fuck people up. It has mental effects and psychic effects that I think are quite bizarre."

The first world is Society of Superheroes, where it's 2014 and they've just come out of a war that was like the Second World War. There's "a lot of zombie fighting in this one. We have actually zombie paratroopers which is a new one!" It takes place on Earth-20. Abin Sur is the Green Lantern of that world, teamed with Lady Blackhawk and Doc Fate. "My thought was that Abin Sur was never seen even though he was protecting Earth because he looks a bit like Satan." Doc Fate is a pulp version of the magic user. "Any Jodphur enthusiasts, this is the book for you."

Book 3 is on Earth-16, and it's "The Just." In this world, "Batman and Superman have already solved all the problems of Earth," and their kids are now left on the world, with superpowers, but there is "seriously nothing to do. Green Arrow (Conner Hawke)'s daughter Arrowette is a Miley Cyrus type and he's trying to stop her getting involved in this stuff. It's a fun book."

In this world, too, The Atom turns 18 and never grows up from there. Lex Luthor's daughter is having an affair with Batman, Jr. - who is Damian Wayne grown up. And in this world Lex killed Superman, so Superman, Jr. is really pissed about their relationship. Offspring, Plasticman's son from an old Mark Waid/Frank Quitely story is in it, too.

Pax Americana is next, which "is our take on the Chalton characters - which plays into Watchmen. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons initially started a story on them, but went into the analogues. So we thought wouldn't it be interesting to take some of the characters and put them into the modern era. It's not the same story as Watchmen; we wanted to take those techniques and reinvent them. We start with the Peace sign on fire instead of the smiley face with blood on it. The cover serves as the first page of the story, and is all about why the Peacemaker assassinated the president of the United States. It goes backwards through time to tell the story.

Morrison and Frank Quitely use an eight-panel grid for the story, as a take-off of the 9-panel grid for Watchmen.

Issue 5 is Thunderworld, with the classic CC Beck style Shazam. Cameron Stewart came onto the project after Morrison simply announced him as that artist, without actually asking him to do it first!

"Grant mentioned it to me as this is the "All-Star Superman" for Shazam/Captain Marvel," Stewart said.

Dr. Sivana and the Sivana family are going to be in the issue, and Morrison said it's funny how he's "married to the most beautiful woman in the galaxy and nothing's good enough for him.

"What Sivana does is tracks the magical lightning back to his source. So he decides to create a technological version and an equation to duplicate the power."

Stewart actually finished this issue over a year ago. "Frank Quitely's been working for 2.5 years and still isn't done," Morrison joked.

Stewart also knows "almost nothing about the overarcing story, so I am really excited to read it. That's the fun of working with Grant, he doesn't tell you anything!"

There is also a guidebook, and it defines every one of the 52 worlds, with all of the characters that live on each one - "I though tI owed you that after all this time," Morrison said.

Earth 6 is the Stan Lee "Just Imagine" Universe, and it's directly opposite the Jack Kirby Universe. A full-color Rian Hughes version of the map will have no text on it, so that you have to use it with the guide book "which is rather like taking six tabs of acid." There are seven "unknown worlds," which used to be a DC theme.

Fan Q&A Summary: No Animal-Mans in this multiverse set of stories. Some throwaway Batmans who only appeared in a panel or two of old stories in the 70s will appear on specific Earths now. President Superman and Captain Carrot lead the "Multiversal team," and Grant's proud there's "only one straight white guy on the whole team" (that's that Multiversity #1 cover). Flashpoint and the other revisions are addressed in the Guidebook, where "all of the history becomes true." "There's a lot that are Elseworlds, like the Justice Riders. I thought it'd be more fun to tie those into the history of DC's Western characters, so Johnny Thunder is a Shazam, and Tomahawk is Tomahawkman - we changed them into Superheroes. They're all riding steampunk horses. There's nothing that's specifically a "pre-52" universe, but a lot of stories that will remind you of comics you used to read."

Matt D. Wilson wrote:For years now, DC Comics fans have been hearing about writer Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity – a universe-jumping series of one-shot stories tied together by an introductory and concluding issue that tracks the cosmic monitor Nix Woton as he tries to save multiple universes from an existential threat. Universes that become aware of this threat by reading about it in comic books… comic books that, it turns out, take place in neighboring universes. We first saw artwork from Frank Quitely’s installment all the way back in 2012, but the project has been in the works since even before the advent of DC’s line-wide 2011 reboot, the New 52 (a name that has proven confusing in the past, but, we promise, never more so than in this interview).

Now it’s finally starting next month, featuring auspicious collaborations with artists including Cameron Stewart, Ben Oliver, Chris Sprouse, Ivan Reis, Frank Quitely, and even more besides, introducing readers to a Vampire Batman, a Nazi Superman, a dinosaur cop, “Sister Miracle,” an evil comic book called Ultra Comics, and tons of other ideas inspired by the deep history of DC Comics lore.

Some of that lore actually comes from other companies, of course, and those elements will be prominently represented in Multiversity. The Shazam family of characters originated in the Fawcett Comics titles of the 1940s, and take a prominent role in Multiversity’s “Thunderworld” issue drawn by Cameron Stewart. Likewise, the heroes acquired by DC from Charlton Comics — such as the Question and Blue Beetle — star in their own issue with artwork by Frank Quitely, who with Morrison will place the characters into a story and style reminiscent of Watchmen, the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel inspired by the same characters.

If that’s not deep enough for you, maybe you’d prefer the Chris Sprouse-drawn world of Earth 20, the home of DC’s World War II era heroes like Doctor Fate (or “Doc Fate”, as he’s known in Multiversity) and Lady Blackhawk. There’s also Earth 16, drawn by Ben Oliver, where the descendants of Superman and the rest of the greatest DC heroes have become vapid, grotesque celebrities like something out of reality television.

But those are just a few details of what will be seven much more fleshed out universes, but even those are just seven of 52. There’s a lot to keep track of, so in addition to Multiversity itself, DC and Morrison will release a guidebook that will finally — seven years since it was introduced in 52 — break down and explain the DC multiverse. Somehow fittingly, the book will feature Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, the last boy on Earth, and include a multiversal map designed by Rian Hughes showing where each of DC’s 52 universes lies on a cosmic landscape.

From what we can see, the Monitor Sphere and the Sphere Of The Gods oversee all of creation, with perhaps lesser entities residing in realms identified as Apokalips, Nightmare, Hell, Underworld, Dream, Heaven, New Genesis, or Skyland. All the universes are contained in an “Orrery of Worlds,” a concept you may remember from 52, the series Morrison wrote with Geoff Johns, Mark Waid and Greg Rucka that excavated the multiverse from DC’s continuity basement.

We sat down with Morrison at Comic-Con International in San Diego for a few minutes to dig into all these events and ideas and talk about how The Multiversity has evolved over its long production.

ComicsAlliance: The Multiversity is a comic book story that’s been years in the making. I’d be interested to start with how, in your mind, the shape of Multiversity has changed in the eight years since we’ve first heard about it.

Grant Morrison: Well originally came out with what we were doing in 52, back in the day with Geoff and Mark and Greg. Originally it was going to be related to that, and as you’ve seen lots of things happened in the end to them. I was pretty busy. The story took a long time to put together and we had to create fifty new universes. It’s been a long time, and also, we’ve been waiting for artists. The artists are very good in this book and it’s just taken people quite a long time. So over that time, the DC Universe has changed quite considerably, which is why I left the guide book to the very end so I could kind of tie it in. So everything is updated along with the New 52, and I think the fact that they called it New 52 makes this book more appropriate now because it kind of serves as an expansion of that universe rather than something different.

CA: You talked about having to create new universes for Multiversity. In the time since this was first conceived, it was part of 52, or came out of 52, now Multiversity accounts for the New 52. Did you have to change much about the the concepts and characters you had “cast” in Multiversity, or the conceptions of the universes where you’re placing these characters?

GM: There wasn’t an awful lot of drastic changes, honestly. Because the multiverse is kind of side by side with the DC Universe as it is. A lot of the things didn’t have to change much. The version of, say, the Charlton characters didn’t have much to do with what was going on in the New 52 anyway, so there wasn’t a lot of changes there. Generally what I’ve done with most of these Earths — especially the ones where Superman and Batman are quite similar; like he’s a Nazi Superman or he’s a Nazi Batman or the Vampire Batman…. all we tried to do there was… sorry I lost my thread thinking about Vampire Batman. What was your question?

CA: Vampire Batman is a very distracting concept.

GM: It’s very easy to get caught up in just thinking about Vampire Batman.

GM: But the idea was that all the characters reflected the changes in the New 52. So when you see Vampire Batman, for instance, he’ll look a bit more generally like designed Batman of the current DC Universe. So, stylistically we tried to keep on top of and obviously very aware of what’s happening with Darkseid and the build up that’s going on in Justice League. So we kind of touch on that. But as I said, because it takes place outside the New 52, we didn’t have to do an awful lot of twisting and turning to just keep pace with that.

CA: The last time you did a series that had this structure to it was Seven Soldiers. Seven concurrent stories with starting and ending chapters. That ended up having a huge effect on DC, as it stood then. A lot of those characters endured. Frankenstein is still around. What kind of impact do you see Multiversity having on the New 52, the DC Universe as it stands now? You talked about it about your project being a little separate from it, but I can’t imagine that there won’t be some lasting impact as well.

GM: I’d like to hope so, obviously. Part of designing all these worlds, the idea was that there isn’t a single Earth in there that couldn’t sustain its own book. One of the things I disliked about people using the multiverse before was that they were creating things indiscriminately. If someone wanted a bad Superman, they’d just pull one from Earth X and suddenly you have a bad Superman and you kill him at the end of the story and never refer to that world again. I thought that was slightly wasteful. Every world should be capable of sustaining its own series and its own stories. So that’s what we’ve done with it.Unlike Seven Soldiers… that was a lot more modular. This one is more of relay race, that was the structure we built because each universe is reading the comic books from the previous universe, and that’s how they learn about the threat, basically. It’s more like a chain. It doesn’t have the same intricate jigsaw pattern as Seven Soldiers. It’s quite linear, this one. I wanted to do something quite linear and simple and everyone could “get” this time. This one is for people who’ve never read DC before but want to get into this gigantic maelstrom of characters and versions of characters; the prismatic world of DC.

CA: They call it the “prismatic age.”

GM: Yeah!

CA: As we’re getting into that more philosophical stuff, in Supergods you talk about the power of stories and superheros being inspirational figures and aspirational figures. That seems like that concept very much plays into Multiversity as comics are part of the universe and how these characters learn about each other. But at the same time, there’s a malevolent comic book in play.

GM: Oh yeah, very much. There’s got to be a bad guy somewhere. I don’t want to say too much about that, but certainly the thing that we’re doing, which is the seventh issue of the series, it’s called “Ultra Comics”, and it’s kind of a new character but it’s based on Earth Prime, which is our Earth, which we re-named Earth 33 now just so it fits in the numerical structure. So Earth Prime is here and I thought, in the past there had been stories like the evil Superboy who lives here. Geoff Jones wrote this guy who sits in his basement writing at the comic news sites [Editor's note: Superboy-Prime is the best comic book character ever]. Prior to that we’ve had stories where the Flash would meet up with Julie Schwartz, the Flash editor, or Cary Bates, the writer.

So I’m thinking, well, we know there are no superheroes in this world; there just are none. What does a superhero look like in this world? Well, it’s made of paper, or it’s something that appears in celluloid. So I set up the task of making the world’s first superhero and the comic being that. I’m interested in the idea of religions of “the book”, that we have in this world. The way they thrive is an actual book, which is the god. It’s not just the word of god, the book itself is God. So people take instruction from it and it becomes a programming language that’s easy to go back and refer to like a manual. So I kind of wanted to do what with a superhero comic.

And you’ll see how it works. I’ve used a lot of hypnotic induction. There’s an old trick that Stan Lee used to do — it was quite popular at Marvel — of the comic talking to you. I took that and this thing, and I think we’ve actually created the world’s first actual superhuman being, which you’ll see how it works when you read this comic. Then the world’s first super human being on this earth has to fight the most malignant entity. So the bad guys in Multiversity who are attacking the entire multiversal structure are also attacking the real world, and this comic is their only way through right now. So it becomes the reader versus the bad guy on the page. I think it’s actually quite scary, this thing. It scared me!CA: We’ve been getting into the deep philosophical stuff about this series, but if someone is trying to work their way into getting into DC Comics, what’s going to appeal to them about Multiversity?

GM: The stories are good. The art is brilliant. The basic comic book stuff is all solid. The most interesting stuff for me, and what I loved as a kid, was just the variance and the versions. I think there’s just something always appealing about Vampire Batman or President Superman, these little iterations of characters, and I think thats mostly what it’s all about. That’s where the real fun lies, in creating the spectrum of how far can you get it from the core before it disintegrates? I think that in itself is just always appealing. There’s more color. There’s more powers. There’s more Earths. So if you like all that stuff in the first place, this is like more of everything. The ultimate banquet of that.

CA: Bigger and better.

GM: Yeah, it’s my ultimate big old statement. I’ve gone so far out there, I’ve hit the white wall. So I think this is my ultimate statement of what DC is.

David Uzumeri wrote:Teased for years and finally launched this week, The Multiversity is a universe-jumping series of DC Comics one-shots tracking the cosmic monitor Nix Uotan and an assemblage of star-crossed heroes as they attempt to save 52 universes and beyond from a trippy cosmic existential threat that, like much of Morrison’s best work, represents something far more mundane and relatable. Tying back into the very first Multiverse story in DC’s history, the heroes of these universes become aware of this threat by reading about it in comic books… comic books that, it turns out, take place in neighboring universes. Indeed, writer Grant Morrison continues his streak of highly metatextual DC cosmic epics with this eight-issue mega-series (plus one Tolkienesque guidebook).

Described by Morrison as “the ultimate statement of what DC is”, The Multiversity naturally offers the reader much beyond the surface level adventure, and that means annotations. Rather than merely filling out checklists of references, my hope with this feature is to slowly unearth and extrapolate a narrative model for Morrison and his collaborators’ work on The Multiversity; an interconnecting web of themes and cause and effect that works both on literal and symbolic levels.

Three pages into the preview for The Multiversity #1, I knew I was going to have a lot to work with.

With no further ado, go get your erasers and your textbooks, close your laptops, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for some course notes. Let’s go to school.

Last edited by TheButcher on Fri Nov 07, 2014 3:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

Steve Morris wrote:Multiversity Too will follow up from this year’s Multiversity – but more accurately, from the guidebook issue that came out partway through the run. A series of graphic novels, each will focus on a different world within the DC Multiverse, ably visualized above. DC hinted at a return to the Pax Americana world populated by Charlton characters, as well as visits to the New Reichsmen of Earth-10 and the Justice Guild of Earth-11, a team made up entirely of women. There’ll also be a look into some of the ‘unknown’ worlds teased in the first series. (DC has confirmed that one of those worlds will be Earth M, the returned Milestone Media universe.)

The first graphic novel is titled Multiversity Too: The Flash, and will be published in 2016. Disappointingly, there is no artist currently attached to the project. Hopefully DC will give us a full creative team shortly.

Kevin Mahadeo wrote:During the his DC Comics panel, Grant Morrison announced a new line of original graphic novels: "Multiversity Too." The series of OGNs take place in the various worlds introduced in the core "Multiversity" series and from the "Multiversity Guidebook." The first title in the line -- "Multiversity Too: The Flash" -- arrives in 2016. However, which version of the Flash we'll be seeing in that title is currently unknown. For all we know it could be all of them, a moment set up in the "Guidebook."

"Multiversity Too isn'twhat you think it is. It's not a follow-up," Morrison explained. "All these years since 1987 I've been trying to get the Multiverse back." However, it wasn't just a confined Multiverse. Morrison said he wanted to bring back the idea of an infinite Multiverse. This series of graphic novels plays in that infinite.

"If you imagine that Multiverse map is one bubble of 52 universes," he said. "There are more bubbles of 50 or 100 universes."

Thus, the books can go anywhere and do anything. Morrison said he really wants to push the characters into new places, even beyond the way they were originally conceived.

Morrison also provided early details on another series of original graphic novels: "Batman: Black & White." A continuation on the "Batman: Black & White" concept seen in previous DC Comics titles and collections, the line features Morrison pairing with rotating artists on stories taking place in the world of the Dark Knight. "It ties into the Multiversity because each of these stories is a different take on Batman." Morrison said there's a Zurr-en-arrh Batman story that stars the daughter of the original Batman and a Bat-mage story. He also said there is a story that focuses on all of Bruce Wayne and Batman's girlfriends.

Official Press Release

During his “Multiversity and Beyond” panel at COMIC-CON INTERNATIONAL: SAN DIEGO 2015, critically-acclaimed writer Grant Morrison introduced fans to two of his upcoming projects for DC Entertainment.

Morrison revealed “MULTIVERSITY TOO,” a line of original graphic novels based on his groundbreaking and bestselling titles from “The Multiversity” series of monthly comics and his “MULTIVERSITY GUIDEBOOK.” Fans will experience stories from throughout the 52 (or more?) worlds that make up Morrison’s Map of the Multiverse and whether it’s the further adventures of Earth-4’s PAX AMERICANA, the New Reichsmen of Earth-10, the female-led Justice Guild of Earth-11 or even one of the seven “unknown worlds,” everything is fair game!

The series begins in 2016 with MULTIVERSITY TOO: THE FLASH. But from which earth is anyone’s guess

Morrison also provided early details on another series of graphic novels featuring everyone’s favorite Dark Knight in BATMAN: BLACK & WHITE. This continuing anthology series pairs Morrison’s original Batman stories with a rotating cast of some of the biggest art talents in comics, that will only serve to highlight Grant’s one of a kind perspective when it comes to comics in general and Batman in particular.